“For us, software libre (open source software) was the only choice,” said Francisco A. Huertas Mendez, technical coordinator of GNU/LinuEx of the Junta de Extremadura. “We were able to stretch our budget very far and provide a powerful and easy-to-use environment with Linux and GNOME. We are also able to give the students all of the productivity programs they need.”
OK, it allows local governments to stretch their pesetas as far as they can. But there’s more to it than simple cost savings . . .
Said Miguel de Icaza, CTO of Ximian, Inc. and GNOME Foundation president, “This initiative not only gives computing ability to all of its students, it also has the potential to grow a local IT industry in Extremadura. This is an excellent example of the control and flexibility that Linux and open source give governments and public sector institutions.”
If this stuff were bought from an American company, the money leaves the country and the expertise to run the systems will need to be imported, to say nothing of perpetual license fees. This way, the locals own the system and can learn from and build it to suit themselves, not some foreign multinational’s quarterly revenue targets.
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Sadly, this will be pitched as simply Linux activism or something like that. We haven’t yet reached the point where “anything that isn’t Microsoft” is seen as a viable alternative, but instead something you use until you outgrow it. It’s not the case, but that’s how the Conventional Wisdom goes.